Friday, January 30, 2015

Often the complaint about juicers is that the fiber from the veggies and fruit goes to waste. You can put it in your composter to create future soil for your garden, but a better more immediate repurposing would be to turn it into veggie burgers.

When making juice I use a minimal amount of fruit. Given all the goodness in the veggie pulp, I decided to come up with a way to make vegan burgers from it. The fact that it has a bit of fruit makes the finished burger that much more tasty.

Add organic corn and beans. I used garbanzo beans for the batch above—I usually use black beans.

Add quinoa flour to the veggie pulp mixture and combine. Then add hummus, BBQ sauce, tapenade or your choice to add flavor and moisture. Add sea salt, fresh ground pepper and a seasoning combo. I like to use Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute.

Press the mixture to a desired thickness (<1/2") on a flat surface or in a shallow flat bowl.

Use a cookie cutter or glass to cut out the burgers.

Brown the burgers in a small amount of olive oil. Cool, wrap in plastic and freeze. Of course you can bake a few burgers to eat immediately.

Juice Pulp Veggie Burgers

from Chris Pedersen

yield Varies

category Main Course

cuisine Healthy, Vegan

ingredients

- Juicer pulp

- Quinoa flour

- Organic corn (frozen or fresh cut off the cob)

- Black beans (rinsed and drained), substitute another type of bean if desired

- BBQ sauce, hummus or tapanade (for moisture and flavor)

- Seasonings

- Olive oil

directions

1. Add pulp from juicer to large bowl with flat bottom. Mix enought quinoa flour through pulp to make the mixture start to stick together.

5. Press pulp mixture into the bottom of the bowl and use cookie cutter or glass to cut out burgers.

6. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium heat to brown the burgers on both sides. Remove to cool.

7. Wrap cooled burgers individually in plastic wrap. Place in sealed bag or container and freeze.

8. To cook burgers, remove from freezer and heat in toaster oven at 350° for 15-20 minutes. Adjust time if necessary.

9. Make the burgers up with your favorite condiments and enjoy.

What kind of juicer do I have? Glad you asked. I love my Hurom Slow Juicer. As the name implies, it's a masticating juicer, which does a great job of squeezing the juice out of the veggies, expelling very dry pulp.